The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877

This is Unit Sixteen, part two, from the Fourteenth Amendment through military Reconstruction to the Fifteenth. Part one closed with ten southern states refusing to ratify the Fourteenth. That refusal is what brings the army back, and this half is what it did. Two entries here are harder than they look. One is the impeachment, where a president who spent his term obstructing Black citizenship was tried for firing a cabinet officer, because the substantive dispute could not be charged. The other is the moment the abolition and women's suffrage movements split, and the anchor records the argument the suffrage side made in terms that are racist and nativist. An account that leaves that out teaches a falsehood about how they parted. By the end you will be able to state what Johnson was actually impeached for. To explain why Sumner would not vote for the Fifteenth Amendment. To explain how the movements parted. To state what Minor held. And to say whether the Fourteenth's representation penalty was ever enforced.

Three entries on the rest of the Fourteenth, and one word in it matters for the whole lecture.

The representation change.

USH1 2272 What Else the Fourteenth Did

The amendment eliminated the three-fifths compromise, so formerly enslaved people counted fully toward representation for the first time, and House seats and electoral votes were to be reduced for states denying adult male suffrage. That penalty was never enforced. States that disenfranchised Black voters after eighteen seventy kept their full representation regardless.

The word it added.

USH1 2273 Male Citizens, Twenty-One

Section two ties the Fourteenth Amendment's representation penalty to the male inhabitants of a state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, and the word male enters the Constitution here for the first time. The section then measures the penalty against the whole number of male citizens. You will see what that did to the suffrage movement later in this lecture.

Who refused to ratify.

USH1 2274 Refusal and Readmission

States that ratified the Fourteenth Amendment would be automatically readmitted, and every former Confederate state except Tennessee refused in eighteen sixty-six, so ratification was offered as the price of representation and declined by ten states. That refusal is what made the military phase possible. Congress could now argue that the South had rejected the terms freely offered to it.

Two entries on eighteen sixty-six, and the second answered a question that had been open.

How Johnson campaigned.

USH1 2275 The Swing Around the Circle

Johnson called openly for the amendment's rejection and made a late-summer speaking tour known as the swing around the circle, holding that ending slavery was enough and that citizenship protections went much too far. He continued to believe Black people were inferior to White people. Hecklers provoked damaging statements, Radicals charged he had been drunk, and his reputation plummeted.

The riots.

USH1 2276 Memphis and New Orleans

Violent race riots broke out in Memphis, Tennessee and in New Orleans, Louisiana in eighteen sixty-six, giving urgency to a second phase of Reconstruction — two cities under civil government, with no Confederate army anywhere in the field. The riots answered the question of whether the southern state governments Johnson recognised would protect freed people. They would not.

Two entries on the men who took control of policy.

Sumner.

USH1 2277 The Radicals

Charles Sumner of Massachusetts advocated school integration, Black male voting rights, and the disenfranchisement of many southern voters — the same senator Preston Brooks had caned in eighteen fifty-six, now writing the terms of the peace. Unit Fourteen covered the caning. The point here is that the man beaten for a speech about Kansas is now setting policy.

Stevens.

USH1 2278 Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania held that the southern states had forfeited their rights by seceding, becoming conquered territory the federal government could organise as it wished, with a vision of plantation land redistribution and of military control. Note how far that is from Lincoln's position, that secession was legally invalid and the states never left.

Three entries on military rule, and note what only the army made possible.

The acts.

USH1 2279 The Reconstruction Acts

The Military Reconstruction Act of eighteen sixty-seven and three supplementary laws divided the ten southern states that had not ratified the Fourteenth Amendment into five military districts, with Tennessee excluded, having already been readmitted. Johnson vetoed the acts as unnecessary and unconstitutional, and Congress overrode him. Readmission now required a new constitution and ratification of the Fourteenth.

What military rule looked like.

USH1 2280 Military Districts

Each district was placed under martial law with a Union general commanding, and twenty thousand federal troops protected freed people across the South, while a supplementary act extended voting rights to all freed men aged twenty-one and older. The same act put elections and voter registration under military oversight, which is the only reason the registrations happened at all.

When they came back.

USH1 2281 Readmission Completed

By the end of eighteen seventy every southern state under military rule had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and rejoined the Union, with Arkansas in June eighteen sixty-eight, and Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and North Carolina that same month. Virginia, Mississippi and Texas returned in eighteen seventy, and Georgia last in July of that year. Tennessee had returned in eighteen sixty-six.

Two entries on the impeachment, and the charge is not what you would expect.

The statute.

USH1 2282 The Tenure of Office Act

Congress passed two constitutionally questionable laws, the Command of the Army Act and the Tenure of Office Act of eighteen sixty-seven, the second requiring Senate approval for presidential appointments and removals alike. Johnson firmly believed in White supremacy, telling Congress in eighteen sixty-eight that placing White people under the domination of persons of color had impaired kindly relations.

What he was tried for.

USH1 2283 The Impeachment

Congress passed two constitutionally questionable laws to constrain Johnson: the Command of the Army Act and the Tenure of Office Act of eighteen sixty-seven, requiring Senate approval for presidential appointments and removals. In August eighteen sixty-seven Johnson removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical ally, without Senate approval, replacing him with Ulysses S. Grant, who resigned and sided with the Republicans. The House drafted the first impeachment resolution in American history, eleven counts, all alleging encroachment on the powers of Congress. The Senate acquitted by one vote, thirty-five to nineteen, with seven Republicans crossing to join the Democrats and independents. Note what he was actually tried for. Not for opposing Black citizenship, but for firing a cabinet officer. The substantive dispute could not be impeached, so a procedural statute was written to manufacture a chargeable offence. One vote decided it, Radicals abandoned impeachment afterwards, and Johnson was effectively silenced for the rest of his term.

Two entries on the third amendment, and its strongest advocate would not vote for it.

The Fifteenth.

USH1 2284 The Fifteenth Amendment

Grant won a landslide over Democrat Horatio Seymour in November eighteen sixty-eight, Democrats carrying what the anchor calls the stigma of disunion, with Republicans blaming Democrats for the war, a tactic southerners called waving the bloody shirt. The Fourteenth had not explicitly barred states from withholding the franchise by race, so a third amendment was drafted in the winter of eighteen sixty-nine.

Why Sumner refused.

USH1 2285 Sumner's Refusal

The Fifteenth Amendment holds that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It was drafted in the winter of eighteen sixty-nine and ratified in eighteen seventy. To secure the broadest support its drafters deliberately excluded any language on literacy tests and poll taxes, which the anchor calls the most common ways Black people were traditionally disenfranchised. Charles Sumner, the Senate's most committed advocate of legal equality, refused to cast a vote for the voting-rights amendment at all. He refused precisely because of those loopholes, and he was proved right within a generation. A state may still require a literacy test, a poll tax, or a property qualification, so long as it does not name race. Every one of those devices was in use across the South within thirty years.

Three entries where two movements come apart, and the last is uncomfortable and stays in.

The association they built together.

USH1 2286 The American Equal Rights Association

After the war, women and men, Black and White, formed the American Equal Rights Association for equal rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, that charter naming race, colour and sex together in one sentence. Unit Thirteen covered the movements running together since Seneca Falls. Hopes that the Fifteenth Amendment would include women were dashed.

What Douglass argued.

USH1 2287 Douglass's Argument

Frederick Douglass argued for a piecemeal approach, insisting his support for women's suffrage was sincere but that Black men's franchise was most urgent, claiming that the government of this country loves women, but the negro is loathed. He held that the negro needs suffrage to protect his life and property. Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell accepted this.

What Stanton argued back.

USH1 2288 Stanton's Argument

The Fourteenth Amendment's section two put the word male into the Constitution, and hopes that the Fifteenth would include women were dashed. Frederick Douglass argued for a piecemeal approach, insisting his support for women's suffrage was sincere while holding that Black men's franchise was of the most urgent necessity, because the negro is loathed and needs suffrage to protect his life and property. Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell largely accepted this. Stanton and Anthony did not. Stanton argued that women's votes would counter the influence of uneducated freedmen in the South and of poor European immigrants in the East. Record that argument as the anchor gives it. The women's suffrage case was made, by its most famous advocate, in racist and nativist terms, and an account that omits this teaches a falsehood about how the movements divided. The word male in section two is where they part.

Two entries to close, on the new organisation and the court that answered it.

The association.

USH1 2289 The National Woman Suffrage Association

Stanton and Anthony organised the National Woman Suffrage Association in eighteen sixty-nine, aggrieved that abolitionists they had worked beside did not demand women's inclusion — an association founded for immediate rights rather than future ones. Its object was to secure state and national protection for women citizens in the exercise of their right to vote. Susan B. Anthony of Rochester was president.

The case that tested it.

USH1 2290 Minor v. Happersett

Virginia Minor tried to register to vote in St. Louis in eighteen seventy-two, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment made citizenship carry the vote with it, and she was turned away and sued over the refusal. In eighteen seventy-four the Supreme Court held that the constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one.

Look at what you can now do. You can state what Johnson was actually impeached for, which was removing a cabinet officer without Senate approval, and explain why: the substantive dispute over Black citizenship could not be charged, so a procedural statute was written to manufacture an offence. The Senate acquitted by one vote. You can explain why Sumner refused to vote for the Fifteenth Amendment — it deliberately said nothing about literacy tests or poll taxes — and say that every one of those devices was in use across the South within thirty years. You can explain how the movements parted: the word male entered the Constitution in section two of the Fourteenth, Douglass argued for a piecemeal approach on grounds of urgency, and Stanton argued that women's votes would counter uneducated freedmen and poor immigrants. You can state what Minor held, which is that the Constitution confers the right of suffrage on no one. And you can say that the Fourteenth's representation penalty was never enforced, and that states disenfranchising Black voters kept their full representation.